Moonshine Creek Trails

Throughout Gainesville, creeks simply vanish into the ground, becoming part of the Floridan Aquifer. The Moonshine Creek Trail provides an up close look at one.

Originally a showy loop around its namesake creek, the trail expanded to include a scramble around and into a large marshy sinkhole that swallows the creek.

The trail is largely in deep shade

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Called the Creek Sink Trail, the second loop is an optional extension to the hike. Taking the perimeter loop makes for a 2.5 mile hike.

Between enormous, towering hardwoods surrounding the sink and delicate Appalachian wildflowers along the creek, this walk is both botanically and geologically interesting.

Dwarf chinkapin oak

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Resources for exploring the area
 
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Overview

Directions

Hike

This hike is on the south side of Millhopper Rd. From the parking area, walk towards the picnic pavilion and follow the trail turning left past it to a kiosk with a map.

Continue along this path to a T intersection and turn right to enter a sandhill habitat, climbing a slight hill up and over a needle-strewn rise paralleling Millhopper Rd.

Hiking through the laurel oaks

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Dwarf chinkapin oaks, short specimens with serrated leaves, rise from the leaf litter. The trail sweeps right, entering climax sandhill dense with laurel oaks.

After a quarter mile, a sign points left. This is the start of the loop on the Moonshine Creek Trail, descending quickly into deciduous forest on a narrow, steep, and rooty footpath.

Trailside sinkhole

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Sugarberry, hackberry, and oaks tower overhead in a layered canopy. It’s an almost continual descent, with roots forming a staircase in one spot.

Near an arrow marker, the landscape falls off precipitously into a sinkhole. The trail levels out once it reaches the floodplain of Moonshine Creek, passing a swamp chestnut oak.

Pausing for a look at Moonshine Creek

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Reach the bridge at 0.6 mile. Wildflowers more commonly associated with the Appalachians thrive along its banks, including trillium and jack-in-the-pulpit.

The stream is clear and sand-bottomed, sluicing its way through the forest. After you cross the bridge, it’s a climb uphill past limestone-loving spleenwort ferns to cross a swale.

Sinkhole pond

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A sinkhole cradles a dark pond, its mucky shores decorated with raccoon tracks. Curving up and away from the pond, pass bluestem palms. Sundial lupine carpets the forest floor.

Beyond a cluster of needle palms is a massive massive slash pine with an odd indent to its trunk, as if an elephant had leaned on it. Its branches start more than seventy feet above.

Look up the trunk to take the measure of this tree

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Dropping off this small ridge, the trail descends into the floodplain of Moonshine Creek to meet its junction with the Creek Sink Trail at 0.8 mile.

A bridge is over Moonshine Creek to the right. Turn left to stay on the outer loop. If you want a shorter hike, use the inner loop to skip the big sink and knock a mile off this hike.

Bridge over the creek

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Blazing switches from yellow discs to red ones, but the trail is always obvious. It drops into a rooty, sometimes damp floodplain where switchcane thrives and curves right.

Turning left, scramble out of the floodplain to the top of a small limestone ridge, where trillium grow along the slope.

The trillium bloom in late January-early February

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The trail curves through this dense hardwood hammock before dropping steeply back into the floodplain.

Cinnamon fern and bluestem palm grow in swales beneath the trees. A thick steel cable, perhaps left behind by the moonshiners working the still, coils out of the forest floor.

Bottomland along the creek

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Passing through a stand of young spruce pines at about a mile, the trail descends past two trees in a close embrace. Trees in this part of the forest grow to significant heights.

Cross a bridge over an ephemeral stream at 1.1 miles, a willow marsh to its right. The trail soon climbs up a bluff.

Bridge in the forest

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Looking down towards the willow marsh and uphill to the slope forest, it becomes obvious you’re inside a giant sinkhole and the marsh fills its bottom.

This is Creek Sink, the end of the line for Moonshine Creek. A short side trail leads to an overlook above the sink.

John takes a gander at the sink

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Leaving the viewpoint, climb steeply, crossing a spot that gets muddy after a rain. Curving, the trail shows off how the forest drops precipitously towards the center of the sink.

Continue along a rapid descent complete with waterbars to minimize erosion, reminiscent of a hike in the Southern Appalachians.

Forested slope above Creek Sink

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The habitat shifts from slope forest to a deciduous forest that also a haven for trees of increasingly amazing size.

Flattening out a little, the trail turns to provide another perspective of the willow marsh in the sinkhole.

Trail in the slope forest

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Walking beneath tall sweetgum and hickory, curve around the edge of the bottom of the big sink at its shoreline.

Following the edge of the willow marsh briefly, the trail provides a glimpse of open water in the middle of the sink.

Willow marsh in the sink

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The trail turns away from the sink and begins its climb between tall loblolly pines into the deciduous forest. The distant hum you hear is Interstate 75.

Dropping through a small floodplain, make your way carefully across the spreading roots of large red maple trees while crossing the wetland.

Under the loblolly pines

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Climbing a slope, the trail heads directly between the bases of two very tall pines. Notice the immense tree trunk on the right, and look up.

It’s an eastern hophornbeam, and it has to be more than a hundred feet tall. Now that’s a tree.

Trunk of the eastern hophornbeam

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The trail zigzags up and up this slope, home to many massive trees, including a towering swamp chestnut oak. Soon after a red marker, the terrain flattens out.

Reach a brown sign at 2 miles. The Creek Sink Trail ends here. Turn left to continue along the outside loop using the Moonshine Creek Trail.

Nearing the end of the Creek Sink Trail

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Traffic sounds filter in from Millhopper Road. With a thick, gray-splotched trunk, the sugar hackberry on the right looks like it is made of poured concrete.

The path broadens among the laurel oaks and slash pines. An old forest road comes in from an angle from the left, and a sign points to the “Exit.”

Sugar hackberry

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Passing a trail on the right, the descent you took into the ravine at Moonshine Creek, you’ve completed the loop.

Follow the broad path back through the sandhills to the trailhead to complete this 2.5 mile hike.

Returning to the trailhead

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Trail Map

Explore More!

Learn more about San Felasco Hammock Preserve State Park

San Felasco Hammock Preserve State Park Florida's weird karst geology meets a forest of towering hardwood trees in this botanically significant preserve on the edge of Gainesville.

Slideshow

See our photos of the Moonshine Creek Trails

Nearby Adventures

More worth exploring while you’re in this area.

Devil’s Millhopper Nature Trail The Devils Millhopper Nature Trail circles the lip of an enormous sinkhole before plunging down into it on a series of staircases and landings with views of natural waterfalls.

Alfred A. Ring Park Featuring a dense slope forest along Hogtown Creek with old-growth trees and rare wildflowers along Appalachian-style ravines, this is a scenic hike in the heart of Gainesville

Mill Creek Preserve Mill Creek Preserve encompasses 5-plus miles of hiking on nearly 1,200 acres of unexpected delights in an area well-known for its sinkholes and disappearing streams.

Prairie Creek Preserve In the deep shade of the floodplain of Prairie Creek near Gainesville, Prairie Creek Preserve is a beauty spot provided to the public by the Alachua Conservation Trust